riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: HARVEST FESTIVAL

Entry tags:

introductory mingle: HARVEST FESTIVAL

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: Introductory Log and Harvest Festival celebration
when: The month of November.
where: Anywhere around the city.
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

harvest festival

In the days leading up to November 1st, residents new and old will notice preparations beginning, a flurry of activity getting the city ready for the upcoming celebration: The Harvest Festival. This holiday is in celebration of the harvest season and autumn, as the moon transitions into its winter period, and is characterized by indulging in the plenty that comes with the harvest season with loved ones, cleaning house figuratively and literally, and making sure that those in need don't suffer during the winter. Celebrations tend to focus around food and charity, with citizens enjoying and sharing cultural meals and sharing stories, or participating in any of the wide range of charity projects and events going on during this season.

a celebration of sharing

The biggest traditions of the Harvest Festival are centered around giving and sharing. Charity is central, and the each year the city sets up a large open tent with warm places to rest for anyone who might be homeless and a table capable of sitting over 50 people at any given time, with a round-the-clock catered feast for anyone who wants to sit and have a meal with anyone else who's dropped by. Besides this, there are a wide variety of events benefiting charities in the city, including a karaoke concert, stray animal round up, and the annual "stuff swap" where residents clean their homes and donate anything they don't need to those who might be lacking. There is also a tradition of writing down repressed or bottled up thoughts, feelings, regrets, sins, and other troubles and tossing them into a bonfire to go into winter with a clean soul.

i. harvest feast & stuff swap

For the first few days of November, anyone dropping by the city center will notice a large tent structure being put into place - by November 3rd, as the last of October's ghosts fade into nonexistence, a veritable banquet hall will have been sent up. For a week following the setup, anyone who drops by the hall and steps inside will see a large table laden with food. Bread, stew, fruits and vegetables, soups, roasted meat, and almost anything else one can think of will be on the table, along with plates, silverware, and cups. Anyone is free to take a plate, settle down at the table, and help themselves to a meal.

The Feast is staffed entirely by volunteers, who do the cooking, cleaning, and tidy up the dishes and area afterwards, keeping the constant stream of food coming. Whether your character is heading in to sit beside a stranger and strike up a conversation, or volunteering their time, energy, or cooking skills to the hall, they're more than welcome.

One corner of the hall is entirely dedicated to the yearly "stuff swap." There's a long-standing tradition of fall cleaning in Riverview Quarantine, where residents will thoroughly clean their homes and rid themselves of excess in preparation for the winter. The extra things that aren't needed can be dropped off at the city center where the Feast is set up, and anyone who is in need of a particular item that has been donated can take it free of charge. This is an honor system, so please be kind to others! (Or don't.)

ii. charity karaoke

On the weekend of November 10th and 11th, while the Feast will be cleared away, the tent is being repurposed for a new event - a Karaoke Concert for the needy! Set up as a makeshift bar and lounge area, the space will be fronted by a large stage where singles or groups of people can choose a song and karaoke their hearts out to a crowd of spectators. There's a by-donation cover fee, and guests are encouraged to reward the best (or most hilariously bad) renditions of beloved songs from across the multiverse with digital "tips" that are transferred to the karaoke performer's charity of choice.

Whether you're a spectator tipping a performer, or a performer who's singing their heart out on the stage to benefit a variety of charities from the homeless to the animal shelter to children in need (and almost anything else you can think of), the Karaoke Concert is both hilarious and heartwarming.

iii. stray animal roundup

One of the main charity events that seems to happen every year is the stray roundup. As the seasons turn and it gets colder and colder at night, many residents who have a soft spot for animals band together to round up as many stray animals as possible and take them to shelters where they can be rehabilitated, given a warm bath, fed, and have a safe place to sleep. Volunteers take to the streets with crates and nets or restraining poles as well as generous bags of treats of food to entice the strays with, and capture them safely to be brought back to the various animal shelters around the Quarantine. Any animal who's caught is put up for adoption, and volunteers are encouraged to take home any strays that they bond particularly well with, or are invited to foster animals in their homes.

Whether your character is a die-hard animal lover, looking for a new pet, or just wants some wacky hijinks trying to chase a wily critter around the streets, they'll be suited up with supplies by other volunteers and released into the fray. The most common animals to be found are cats, dogs, and small domesticated foxes, but feel free to assume that your character is rounding up a reptile, rodent, bird, or a domesticated alien critter. Playing a thread with this prompt is a great opportunity to get a cute alien pet for your character without spending AP.

iv. letting go

On the evening of November 15th, a series of large bonfires will be set up all along the beaches of the river, and as the night falls, people begin migrating to the beaches from all over the city carrying slips of paper in a wide variety of colors with words written on them in a wide variety of languages, and throwing them into the fires. This is a way of psychologically and emotionally cleaning house for the residents of the Quarantine, because the papers they bring contain the stories of their pain, poems written about the feelings they bottle up, a venting of their anger and fear and resentment, all to be eaten up by the flames and washed away by the river with the next rain.

No matter where a person comes from, they carry pain and suffering and hurts that they must hide. This is a welcome opportunity for characters to write out their thoughts and feelings and release them. And if the symbolism of burning them isn't enough, there are always other people around the fires who are willing to listen, to hear all those things that people keep locked up inside. Share a story willingly, listen to someone's story, or just get caught holding your deepest darkest secrets on a really vulnerable piece of paper...it's up to you.

v. roommates or wildcard

Feel free to use this prompt to meet new roommates, for the purpose of getting to know each other, or hit up the mod-posted prompt to create a Communal Housing floor mingle. Or, if you have an idea for a prompt that isn't in this list, set during the Harvest Festival, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: image i & iii: Bastien Grivet; image ii & iv: unknown (stock/hobbiton)

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[The question catches Alex off guard, and she just laughs a bit before she shoves the paper back into her pocket. At this point, it's not even going to need the fire to destroy it; it's simply going to come from the too and for of Alex's indecision around it.

But she gives the man a welcoming smile to go along with the shrug and considers for a second.]

A friend of mine would probably say that flipping a coin really wouldn't matter if this was something that I really wanted to do or not. He'd also think that this entire thing was completely bull, but that's a whole nother story in and of itself.

Can't be completely bull if they do it every year, right? I mean, some people must be gettin' something out of it, or else they would stop.

[ Even if the whole exercise is a ritual without material consequences, there's something appealing in the idea of it. It's one thing to tell yourself "gosh I gotta let go", it's another to do it while changing something tangible in the world, at the same time. ]

What you got written on that paper have anything to do with this friend?

[ It's just a guess - maybe a long shot, but if the guy was the first thing that came to her mind when she decided not to toss the paper in the fire, maybe he had already been in her thoughts. ]

You don't gotta tell me if you want. I'm just being nosy.

[ And he offers a hand for her to shake, and a small smile. ]

I'm Cisco Ramon.

That's true. [Of course, Strand would argue that it was the same as wishing and miracles, but Alex didn't take a hard line as that. She believed that sometimes people needed to do what they needed to do in order to get through the day. Or more often than not it was night in her case.

The question, makes her laugh, just a little bit, and she shakes her head.]

No. Not in the way you're thinking. Dr. Strand, he's my friend, but we also work together. This is more on the work side of things than anything else.

[No, Alex doesn't say 'Dr. Strand' when she is working on distancing herself from things. No, why would you think that. But she does take the hand he offers with a smile.]

Alex Reagan, nice to meet you.

[ Cisco's eyebrows raise, ever so slightly. He hadn't been 'thinking' much of anything at all, which makes the fact that she assumed he'd been assuming all the more interesting. But he's going to go ahead and keep that to himself for now. ]

What kinda work you in, if you don't mind me asking? Are you a doctor, too?

[ It seems clear that Cisco is assuming that the doctor in Dr. Strand stood for an MD rather than a PhD. Alex seems young to be a doctor, but then again Cisco is young to be a mechanical engineer. He's accustomed to not judging based on age. ]

[That makes Alex laugh, and she shakes her head quickly with a smile.]

I'm a journalist. I work for Pacific Northwest Stories, not that that seems to mean anything to anyone here. I have a podcast that investigates things that could be possibly supernatural.

[Yeah, she's not going to say demons. Or Strand. Or weird math cults. Just 'things' works for now.]

Dr. Strand is sort of my---our-- scientific expert. He runs a whole Institute to disprove everything.

Can't say I've heard of it. But I do know what a podcast is!

[ That's gotta be relatively rare, for the population of this moon, just based on how diverse the various worlds people come from are. Cisco has a hard enough time finding people that understand what a movie is, let alone half of the references he makes to them in any given conversation. ]

That's so dope, though. What kind of supernatural stuff? Like, are we talking ghosts, 'cause... wait, were you here last month?

[ Surely even if she wasn't, she's heard from others about the fact that there had been ghosts all around town for pretty much the entire month. He can't be the first one to tell her, can he? ]

Wow. Sounds like he would love it here. [ Just a touch of sarcasm in that. ] You do know there are people here who can do magic, right? Like actual, summon a goddamn unicorn type magic. That blew my freaking mind when I first showed up.

Oh good!

[Alex is just going to beam because someone knows what it is. Thank goodness for that. It definitely saved her from giving at least one 'radio on demand' speech which she was always glad for. Especially here, which was why she had just shortened things to 'journalist'.

But at the mention of the ghosts last month, she just shakes her head.]

I missed that. And as much as I love a good ghost story, walking around with my own personal one might have been a little too much on top of everything else.

[Understatement of the year; if she'd seen Keith Dabbage or Maddie Franks with their eyes were their mouth should be and their mouth where their eyes would be, Alex probably would have lost her mind.]

But yeah, Strand disapproves a lot of that stuff. Mostly we've been focusing on other things though.

[Strand would hate the idea of magic, but for Alex, she just grins.]

Okay, that is pretty cool.

[ Cisco can't help it; when Alex says that the ghosts might have been "a little too much," he just laughs. There's a hint of bitterness in it, only just audible. Still, better to laugh about the whole thing than to confront how bad it had been, seriously. Humor's a perfectly lovely defense mechanism. ]

What're you talking about, it was awesome. Who doesn't wanna run into their dead best friend on the way to get some froyo?

[ It's easier to joke about seeing Ronnie's ghost, in part because it hadn't been as bad as all the stuff that had happened with Eobard. The sarcasm in his voice is hard to miss, but he keeps it light; he doesn't want to freak Alex out about this place, when last month had been an outlier as far as Cisco is concerned. Most of the time, he likes this place a lot better than Earth. ]

What kinds of stuff have you been focusing on?

[ Cisco isn't sure if Alex is talking cryptid-type stuff, or miracle cures, or who knows what. There are a lot of different options, and he's honestly curious. ]

I can introduce you to a wizard, sometime. If you want.

[ Taako loves being a show off, if nothing else. ]

[Alex is definitely someone who understands humor as a defense mechanism; she uses it often enough on her show. Whether or not she's good at it is currently up for debate, but it's still something that she tries fairly often. So, she gets it, and she just gives him an understanding smile about that bitterness. Hell, she'd probably be bitter about dealing with ghosts from her past as well.

But she definitely isn't showing signs of freaking out, at least not yet. For Alex, peak freakout times come between the hours of midnight and three am when hopefully she will be alone and not waking up any sort of roommates.

And speaking of, she's going to give him a distraction in the form of her own personal demons by mentioning... well:]

Cults that may or may not be demonic in nature that are attempting to destroy the world.

[And then she shrugs and smiles, spreading her hands in a definite: yes, I know how it sounds way.]

I would love to meet an actual wizard, though.

Dude. That's some heavy shit.

[ He's visibly surprised, but he's not reacting as drastically as he would if she'd said something like that to him within the first few months of his arrival here. In this place, Cisco's found, there are a lot of people from a lot of different situations. Plenty of them were heroes, or demigods, or fighting desperate battles to save their families or worlds from destruction. Whatever logic was behind the portal's selection process, it seemed to prefer people who had already had their mettle tested by some pretty serious situations.

Still... demonic cults. Yikes. That's a new one. ]

There's a whole institute of magic here, you can wander in there and say hi to pretty much anybody.

[ That was what Cisco had done, how he'd first met Lucretia - just wandered right in and declared that he wanted to ask somebody some questions about magic. Looking back, that had been a pretty strange way of going about things, but he's glad he'd done it. ]

I met a guy at a party here from this whole family of demon-hunters, and he said he hasn't seen any in this place, so... that's good, anyway?

[ There was, however, definitely a recent Incident with a fairly nasty magic cult that some of his friend had participated in breaking up, but Alex doesn't need to know about that. ]

[Alex's eyes are practically shining at that. Of course that's exactly what Alex would do here. After all, she was persistent as hell, and asking questions and getting answers was her profession both here and at home. If magic was real, then well she was going to learn everything about it, if only to annoy Strand if he ever showed up. And then she pushed that thought away before she gave him a smile and focused on the relief she felt when he said there was no demons here.

If she was honest with herself (and Alex did try to be when she could be) she was worried about demons here. Of course, she was worried about demons everywhere, because it was hard not to be, even when one had the stoic voice of Richard Strand reminding her that they weren't real.

So, she just nods, and her smile grows a little lighter:]

Well, there's one less thing to worry about here. I'm glad for that!

His name's Alec Lightwood if you ever wanna hit him up to talk, I don't know, anti-demony stuff. Also, there are monsters out past the wall. I don't know if anybody's given you the spiel, but you should definitely not go out there on your own, like, ever. Trust me.

[ He knows that, compared to the sort of people who are on the Perimeter Guard, his contact with monsters has been relatively limited. However, he thinks that two encounters is more than enough for one humble nerd, thanks very much.

Since they're talking about their various worlds, Cisco poses another question: ]

You got superheroes where you come from?

[ He asks it with all the fanfare of someone asking a person from another state whether they have a certain chain of grocery stores. And it's true that, in Cisco's life, the presence of superheroes is a relatively mundane feature. ]

[Alex committed the name to memory. There was no way that she couldn't, not with everything that was currently happening in her life. Well, at least her life back home anyway. So far she'd been here a day, and she hadn't heard or seen anything about demons or sacred geometry, and she hadn't yet been to sleep that much so she doesn't know if nightmares are a thing. But if she goes home, having the knowledge of how best to fight something that might not be real is still probably a good thing to have.

And then she nods:]

I'll try to avoid going out there then.

[Of course Alex tends to be rather bad at avoiding the things that she's meant to avoid, but that's neither here or there.]

Only in movies and tv shows and comics, I'm afraid.

[ Cisco gives a bit of a shrug; it's a fine line to walk, warning her without scaring her or sounding discouraging. ]

It's not all that dire, just... better to use the buddy system, and all.

[ Her response to the question about superheroes doesn't surprise him; most of the people here are from worlds without them, and it's at least helpful that she is from one of the ones where the concept of superheroes exists, even if only in fiction. That gets rid of a certain amount of explaining, makes it easier for him to say: ]

Well, they do where I'm from. That's what I did, before I came here. Not... being one myself, more like. You know Q, from the Bond movies? Like that, but for superheroes.

[ He gives a little shrug; he's not boasting, so much as sharing something about himself, since she'd told him what she used to do. ]

[Alex just studied him for a moment, with a smile. It was a smile that people around her would know better than to be happy about. It was the sort of smile that meant that Alex was interested in something as a story, and her fingers itched to bring out her recorder. Of course, she didn't, because she didn't have it here but Alex did have a good memory.

Her attention focused on him for a long moment, because she believed him. Hell, this place had magic and what not, so why not superheros.]

So you're an inventor?

[She left the question open as she reviewed in her head all the things that Q did in the Bond movies, but ignoring the part of her brain that reminded her of her own 'Sexy James Bond.']

[ Cisco, for his part, doesn't seem to mind the curiosity one bit. He loves his work, and loves that he can actually talk about it here. It had all been strictly secret, back in Central City, but he'd decided long ago that there wasn't any point to keeping it secret, here. They're on a moon somewhere in the cosmos in another version of reality: he's pretty sure that even if he made an announcement proclaiming Barry's identity to everybody here, there wouldn't be any consequences back home. ]

I mean - a mechanical engineer, technically, but... yeah, I am. And I did some other stuff, too. Like design the suits, give all the villains their catchy nicknames. You know in movies, where there's somebody out in the field, and somebody back in the van or base or whatever, talking 'em through it over comms? I'm the guy in the base.

[ It had been a little more complicated than that, in real life. Cisco ended up in danger sometimes - found himself in the thick of things, having to act himself rather than direct Barry how to save the day. But he neglects to mention those instances, because that would make him sound too much like a hero, himself - and he's definitely not that. ]

So... no superheroes, and I'm assuming, no metahumans either?

Edited 2017-12-11 03:22 (UTC)

Metahuman? Like someone with powers or whatever?

[That makes sense to her. It seems like something that Nic would say, and for a moment, Alex just considers how to best go about answering. She knows what her answer probably should be, given everything, but she has literally just gotten back from seeing Simon (well, not seeing Simon but close enough) so what he can claim to do is still fresh in her memory. More than that, it's easier to think of things as real without Strand's voice droning in her ear about how things are fake.

Besides, she thinks she believes in Simon after holding the horn of tiamat in her own hands.]

It's kinda up for debate. My friend would say that there's no rational scientific proof of it, but I think I believe someone I know can do things that he shouldn't.

Yeah, that's our word for somebody with powers. There's people here from worlds where they're called mutants, or sometimes inhumans, I think, but in my world it's metas.

[ He is, naturally, not going to mention the fact that he's a meta, himself. Cisco's made a lot of progress since he came here, towards accepting his powers, but it's going to be a long while before he's comfortable owning up to them to a complete stranger, even if she does seem nice.

His eyes brighten when she mentions she knows someone who might have abilities. ]

What kinds of things can he do?

[ Cisco can't help but notice, as well, the way that Alex keeps bringing up this friend of hers, the skeptical one. He doesn't know quite what to make of it yet, but he does add: ]

It's all pretty thoroughly scientifically verified, back home. I mean... the reason there's metas in the first place was an explosion at a particle accelerator that tore a hole in the dimensional barrier and released a wave of dark matter into the city. It took a while after that for people to figure out what had happened, but... it was about 1% of the population that got changed. Pretty hard not to notice after a while, when you've got guys summoning tornados in the middle of banks, and heroes running faster than the speed of sound down the middle of a downtown street. Not really any kind of a secret, at that point.

[For a moment, Alex's eyes just go wide, and her fingers itch for her recorder to get this all on tape. Granted, it seems to be something that everyone already knows about but there's also excellent leads for a story there if she just pulled at them in the right way. Honestly, she's about to ask if he is a metahuman too, but decides to hold back. It's too soon for that and she's taking all of this in. One percent of the population doesn't sound like a lot, but she know it is.]

Wow. [The sound is drawn out as she just eyes him for a moment, trying to picture a world with tornados going down the street. Honestly, Alex's imagination is such that she can see it quite clearly.]

As far as I know, we don't have anyone in our world who can do that. But Simon, he can bilocate. At least he says he can. And I believe him. [That sentence is a bit defensive, but Alex is used to needing to defend her viewpoint.]

Wow's right. It's pretty insane. And awesome.

[ There had been drawbacks, of course, but for the most part Cisco had been excited by the new, awesome world of metahumans and superheroes and adventure. After all, there had been bad people and crime and awfulness before there were metas - and a world with the Flash in it seemed like a better world, to him. ]

Bilocate? What's that, some kinda Grindr spinoff app but for bi people?

[ Cisco realizes a moment too late that a) Alex might not get that reference and might ask him to explain what Grindr is at which point he will possibly spontaneously combust from embarrassment and b) that even if she does the joke might not land all that well. He rubs at the back of his neck, embarrassed, and says quickly: ]

Sorry, uh. Odd sense of humor. Anyway that means being in two places at once, right? There've been a couple metas that could do stuff like that. This one dude, Multiplex, could split his body into multiple copies of himself. Pulled off a five-man robbery all by himself, that sort of thing. And there's speedsters who can run between two points fast enough that they leave an after image... a speed mirage, so it looks like there are two of them. But I don't know about anybody who could just... be in two places.

Edited 2017-12-16 21:39 (UTC)

[That makes her laugh, but gives her a twinge of homesickness because it definitely sounds like a joke that Nic would have made after he was one or two beers into an evening. And she shakes her head quickly because it doesn't bother her.]

Don't worry, if there was a Grindr spinoff app for bi people, I'd probably be on it. But I'd definitely come up with a better name for it than that. [Or she hoped anyway.]

But yeah, two places at once. Wow. Multiplex, huh? That's insane. He can be in two place and interact with things in his environment and stuff. He does it through this thing called sacred geometry. That's what I assume anyway, because we've found it at almost every place that he's been at. [Almost. Not his parents house, or if he was actually in Alex's apartment. But she shrugged.] He's not exactly the most forthcoming person I've ever met.

[Nice understatement there, Alex.]

[ Cisco positively beams at that. He can't even act mock-offended that she didn't like the pun. ]

Okay, you're right, it's a bit of a reach.

[ And maybe he is actually wondering now whether or not he could code something like that for the Quarantine. Sure, he's got a boyfriend and doesn't need it himself, but it would be, like, a public service. Or it would cause a whole lot of chaos. One or the other. ]

Sacred geometry? Seriously? You mean, like, math magic? That is so unbelievably dope.

[ At least, that is how it sounds to Cisco. He's always thought magic was awesome (even before he ran into anyone who could actually use it), and he is an absolute nerd for all things math-related. ]

Cryptic type?

Yeah, math magic would be a good way of putting it. I've spent hours talking to professors and trying to understand it, but so far all I get is the basic concepts and how it's not supposed to work but actually does. There's a whole bunch of stuff about Pythagoreanism and Order of the Cenophus and the music of the universe that has to do with the math.

[Or so Alex believes anyway. Feel free to argue with her, everyone always does anyway.

But then she chuckles softly and shrugs her shoulders for a moment.]

He's cryptic like you wouldn't believe. I just went to meet him in Turkey and he would only talk to me through a speaker phone.

[ Cisco might not know the details, but if there's one thing he's learned since the particle accelerator had exploded, it's that "impossible" is often negotiable. Just because he's never heard of any kind of math that could do magic doesn't mean it doesn't exist, for someone, somewhere. Hell, he's sure that half the stuff he can do with his powers might seem like magic to someone who didn't know better. ]

Damn, that's next-level cryptic.

[ And upon hearing that, Cisco, who feels like he's probably interrogated the poor girl enough already, launches into an amusing anecdote about Malcolm Merlyn (who is, after all, by far the most cryptic person Cisco's ever met) and his whole secret league of assassins, and obnoxious habit of just appearing in rooms at the most dramatic moment possible. Cisco even speculates (though it's clear from his tone that he's joking) that if there's math-based magic, perhaps there's melodrama-based magic, too, and that's what gives Merlyn his power. ]

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introductory mingle: HARVEST FESTIVAL

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